I turned off anonymous voting because of intentional down-voting which has plagued this site for years. Down vote the good to great stories and up vote mediocre ones.

Many, many authors have left this site due to that issue.

 

I'm very new here. This may not weigh much.

Disclaimer out of the way, I spent (invested might be a better term) quite a bit of time reading a bunch of stuff from a variety of writers on the Sex Stories side as well as those threads in the Forum.

What I noticed is that many of the better rated posts tend to be what I think of as 'scenes' vs. actual plotted stories. I was surprised to see that 'technical ability' - spelling, grammar, formatting, etc., was not a necessity. Titillation was. That's purely anecdotal, of course. I was curious about what worked, in terms of rating and reader tallies.

Then I looked at the other end of the spectrum to see if I could learn what did not get high marks.

Again anecdotally, it showed lots of those were poorly written and/or edited. But a fair bit of what I thought was good work got trounced. The stories I enjoyed in that group were all actual stories with at least a semblance of a plot. Plots take up space.

A hasty analysis indicated that attention span of the reader might be a factor. Being part of a sex content site that features mostly video fragments designed to reward an audience that enjoys 'skipping to the best parts' is a factor in story voting as well, I think. Many of those folks become our readers - and raters.

They want to be aroused more than entertained, I believe. And immediately, so that they can get to the next titillating offering.

Story voting seems to reflect the degree of our readers' patience.

 

My first story, which is a five-parter and is very much a story, not about just titillation, has an average rating of about 95%. Making believable characters with at least somewhat realistic motivations and actions is something I strive for. I'll spend ten pages of a story setting the scene, giving background details, and trying to find ways to draw the reader into the story. I know that's not for everyone, but it's what makes me happy as a writer. I write stories that I would want to read. If the rating is anything to go by, enough people do appreciate that. My stories aren't the most read on the site, but the people that are taking the time to read them seem to like it. I didn't see a lot of really terrible stories on the top rankings but I see a lot in the forum section. Some of the things writers post don't even have paragraphs or punctuation but there are always comments underneath telling the writer how great it was and how they can't wait for more. Go figure.

 

A Mulit-Part series has to capture the readers imagination and come out in a timely manner. The MAIN reason for drop offs is the time additional parts of stories come out.

Readers want their stories churned out quickly and it's hard, especially for myself, to do so with how carefully I tried to craft my stories.

If I ever do start to write again I would write out multiple chapters and post them every few days to feed the beasts

 

To be honest, I'm okay with the constant 'like-war' this site seems to have. Some days it's better, some it's worse, but I write for the enjoyment of others, and the voting system doesn't rob me of the ability to do that. The site still has it's clear advantages, and I doubt I will ever straight-up leave or remove my stories. Some will get caught up in the war perhaps, but I don't imagine it was a grave loss. Between my two most recent stories, A Miraculous Affair was a tad too silly and poorly paced, and Mutual Benefits probably had too much plot-related buildup for the tastes of this site, as Illysette wisely alludes to. If they're disliked, they're disliked, and even if they're artificially buried, then they're artificially buried.

I'd rather put resources into writing stories on the off-chance people will see them and enjoy them, and doing my bit as we all do to cultivate and enjoy the community this website brings. I can do that with a 95%, a 70%, or a 0% on my stories.

 

This might be a more bizarre opinion, but I also kind of like how little this website's readership cares about perfect spelling/grammar. I'd obviously prefer some kind of standard as we all do, but it does remove a bit of the pretentiousness or even the glass ceiling of little formal education. I'd rather see a story with clear passion and love put into it from a person who makes many mistakes than a cynical lazy stroke story made by someone with perfect spelling and grammar.

 

I can't honestly say the intentional down-voting doesn't bother me. I've been a reader on this site for years. I started writing just as a hobby.

I put way too much effort into what I put out for it to just be trashed and put into the abyss. Now granted, my stories are highly rated but I've noticed what was going on so I stopped anonymous voting.

The bigger issue is not showing author's latest work when you hit said author's profile. That needs to corrected ASAP.

Yes, you can type their name in the search bar and see their latest stories but that's a bit ridiculous.

 

I've thought about that and I've come up with a temporary solution. In the past I've used the 'favourites' section on my profile to highlight stories of this site I've enjoyed, but I've since cleared that list and instead 'favourited' all of my stories that won't show up on my profile otherwise. In this way, my profile now shows a list of every story I've written until around Autumn 2021, and another list of every story I've written post-Autumn 2021. I invite all of the authors reading this to do the same, especially if they do episodic/serial/'chapter-based' writing.

It's not a perfect solution - and sadly, it removes a few stories from my profile page that I think are good and want to highlight - but hopefully, someday, that old list of my favourites will return. For now, all of my stories are once again able to be seen and accessed from my profile page.

 

Nothing about a writer's talent, but I have difficulty reading and enjoying a story when the writer doesn't use paragraphs.

 

Downvoting only getting worse.

 

I guess part of it is, are stories being read like they were? To some extent, sure. A majority are there to click on a random story and "amuse" themselves. But what about those who pop in and look for certain authors, or highly rated stories?

 

Just add 10 percentage points to what you get. I guess that will be the true rating.

throatHer out

Carry-on

 

Hi I'm new to writing and would like to get some help with my first draft, can anyone help please?

 

I find I've forgotten how this sub forum works. I'm hoping this will show up as a new post. Anyway, I'm posting here to find out how to submit a story to SexStories.com. I already submitted one about a year ago, but I have no idea how I did it. Whenever I click on a "submit a text" at the bottom of the page it takes me right back here to forum.xnxx.com where I'm already logged in. Can someone help? I've posted my 4 stories here in the Sex Stories subforum. Would like to get my other 3 on sexstories.com.
tia
ag

 

No.

 

Since I can't find the story I can't try the Save thing. I finally added - A Short Story to the title and did the whole thing over. Now the two I added yesterday are sitting in my Stories list with Edit and Delete as options, but not View. If I click on Edit, it shows the story with "Publish Your Story" in the Validation dropdown but clicking Save doesn't change anything. I'm hoping just waiting will make it show up with a View button which I'm interpreting as its being seen by the world.

 

I have the same problem as AG31.
I wrote a story and pressed publish last Monday. A message came up which I think said the title had been used before and the story disappeared. It's not there at all under my stories. Should I submit it again with a different title?

What should I see when I have a story that's been submitted? Should it be there with something like 'pending'?

 

I'm new here but joined to be able to make comments.

I've been reading a series of stories by a particular author and would like to offer to edit his stories.

His stories don't have many spelling errors - maybe he uses spell check - but many, many of the words he uses are just wrong, correctly spelled (so spell check won't flag them) but the wrong word, e.g., "defiantly" instead of "definitely", "then" instead of "than" - and vice versa (this seems to be a regular among US-based writers), "mater" instead of "matter", "shuttering" instead of "shuddering", etc. He has literally hundreds of incorrect words in his submissions.

Poor punctuation and paragraphing doesn't help readability, either.

I'll contact him when I get 6 posts up and can send PMs.

 

That is entirely possible but I hope not.

I must admit that a couple of times it took a while to work out what word the author intended to write. Don't get me wrong, I liked his/her stories, they aren't short and they develop well - they aren't just "slam, bam, thank you, ma'am" tales. That's why I'm willing to spend the time with the author editing their work.

I've done proof-reading work in the past (usually on technical documents).

 

In SexStories.com, what does the nb mean in nb comments and nb reads? I asked this before, some time ago, but can I find the answer???? No......

tia
ag